Thursday, May 27, 2010

Britain Discloses Size of Nuclear Stockpile

The new British government today followed the French and U.S. examples by disclosing its total military stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Foreign Secretary William Hague told the House of Commons that “the total number of warheads” in the “overall stockpile” will not exceed 225. Of those, “up to 160” are “operationally available” for deployment on Trident II missiles on British ballistic missile submarines.

The Royal Navy possesses four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), each of which can carry up to 16 U.S.-supplied Trident II long-range ballistic missiles. Each missile is thought to carry up to three UK-produced warheads closely resembling the U.S. 100-kt W76 warhead. Whereas the United States declassified its entire stockpile history, the British government has only disclosed the current size of its stockpile, and only in the somewhat cryptic way: “the overall stockpile…will not exceed 225 warheads.”

That presumably means the stockpile actually contains 225 warheads, not that it might be smaller but “not exceed 225 warheads” even in the future.

That is 25 warheads more than the 200 Robert Norris and I have estimated in the past.